Rai & Markus' "Drake" HD camera

Wayne Morellini · November 17th, 2004, 07:42 AM

Thanks, the spezial's say a lot about cinema features and design commitment. I think what people are after is a brief Features/Specifications summary page, like many product marketing brochures do (and Rob says "No, no, more, more! ;).

Obin Olson · November 17th, 2004, 07:53 AM

@Markus:
The piles of data you get with higher resolution and higher bit depth are just a little too much for todays processors and hard drives...

Not really I will be recording 12bit 1920x1080 images at 24fps

markus I would not make a product that is 8bit. It's not good enough for post work

Wayne Morellini · November 17th, 2004, 08:05 AM

I agree, unless you want a small low power or one drive camera 1080p is totally possible.

Rob Lohman · November 17th, 2004, 08:36 AM

Rai: I know it is. Okay, if that's the way you guys want to do this
then we'll have to wait I guess. Good luck.

Rai Orz · November 17th, 2004, 09:03 AM

@Obin:
by sure, Markus team do enough tests with post work.
Drake have some spezial things, started with white balance (why we need 2 Bits more, if we kill this for white balace in the post?)over look up table for convert down to 8Bit to some others, so at the end, DRAKEs 8Bit writing to only one HDD is optimal.
A engeneer may see first the datas. Artists see also the result.

What Markus said about todays (PC) processors is this: You can´t find a system without noise (from coolers) and also only low power need. And they don´t like swaping HDDs every few minutes.

BTW: If you like start a game: Lets do this: Who can record first, 1920x1080, 24fps, 36Bit. All parts, in a portable camera case, low power, no noise, battery.
... and scameramans fan: swaping HDDs each 4 minutes

Wayne Morellini · November 17th, 2004, 09:33 AM

I can say this, 35mm film cameras can be big, Rolls of film are big. So in comparison 4 drive (cheap drives in Raid to save money and increase capacity) canbe smaller and tripod mounted, and the drives be smaller than a roll of film.

What you are facing is cooling technique problems. For my Case ideas I was looking at an almost completely silent passive cooling (well possibly completely) technique with added unique features. Very patentable stuff. But if you look around you should be able to find and implement existing passive cooling techniques. The second problem is peak efficiency, which means in hot places like where I live you will need much more efficency then in Germany. So you have to get processing power under a certain heat disapation per GHZ. This means single or multicore, Pent M and VIA processors, and using a good onbaord GPU and DSP's (every trick in the book). Then also lower powered lower speed memory (memory aren't the major speed restriction). Drives, well if you use an extra drive on cheap array you can use lower powered higher capacity drives, so now they last 4 times longer per drive *2+ drives. But you get the picture on how to shoe horn in a system. Now using best programming practices (and realtime OS or stripped realtime Linux witrh Machine code extensions) maybe you also halve the proccessing power needed.

So if Markus looks at what the average PC does it may look impossible, but if you look at what the best can do it is.

Régine Weinberg · November 18th, 2004, 05:22 AM

Hm
good morning, a bit late okay
go back 20 years and there you have all you need
it was used by STAX for their Class A amps, fantastic sound still today, called "heat pipe" no noise at all, it is heavily used by radio amteurs and works

no problems only solulutions

Jason Rodriguez · November 18th, 2004, 01:17 PM

Four Fujistu 5400RPM 2.5" SATA drives can sustain over 100MB/s. The new Seagate 7200.1 Momentus drives (2.5" SATA) in a four drive RAID can sustain over 120MB/s. They also go up to 100GB each, and four of them will fit in the same space as a single 3.5" drive.

The Fujitsu's are available now. The Seagates in 1Q05. Combind that with a SATA RAID card or the 4 sata ports on a 915 chipset (and the 915GM when it ships in January, also called "Alviso" that'll use the lower-powered Pentium M), and you've got a ton of throughput without a lot of heat, wattage, etc.

If you're doing things right, you don't need to have four 10K drives gobbling up 50W of power to get the throughput you need.

Jason Rodriguez · November 18th, 2004, 01:25 PM

Quote:

BTW: If you like start a game: Lets do this: Who can record first, 1920x1080, 24fps, 36Bit. All parts, in a portable camera case, low power, no noise, battery.
... and scameramans fan: swaping HDDs each 4 minutes

Okay, the parts aren't there RIGHT NOW.

And you have a point there, your DRAKE system is working an functional right now. But in a couple months, you'll have a quiet (film cameras aren't completely quite BTW) camera system based on the Pentium M and the 915GM chipset with four small 2.5" SATA drives for recording. It won't take loud fans to keep it cool, etc., it'll be the perfect package that your looking for.

But honestly you probably won't be able to build something like that till next summer. But it'll be here, and it's coming pretty fast.

In the meantime you have a working system, but if you only have on shot at this (and not unlimited funds to keep spending on developing camera systems), then a couple months of waiting will give you a great chip in the Altasens-based cameras, and a quiet recorder that's SATA and Pentium-M based.

Rai Orz · November 18th, 2004, 03:46 PM

Jason, this thread is for DRAKE. And DRAKE work with only one HDD.
Let me say only one thing: Be sure, we know what is possible. And if you can read between the lines, you maybe know what you will find some day from us.

But now lets talk about DRAKE. Tomorrow we will have a final product design meeting. As we said it, it is a whole SYSTEM, not only a camera. I´m sure we talk also about things we can say here before the web side is ready

Gary McClurg · November 18th, 2004, 05:36 PM

So is the web site going to be up tomorrow or the camera is going to be ready?

Michael Struthers · November 18th, 2004, 05:53 PM

All this talk and not one pic of the camera. Don't know if I believe it.

As Elvis says:

"A little less conversation, and a little more action"

Rai Orz · November 19th, 2004, 02:29 AM

@Gary and @Michael:

The camera is ready. Markus continue shoot his movie with it. You saw first clips here.

But today we will talk about last changes in case and accessories design, because most mechanics parts are made by hand, whithout CNC. To start (and optimize) serial production, we must change some part design (only for part production, not for function). On the other hand, we will talk today about a main question: What parts and accessories will be included, and whats optional.

Wayne Morellini · November 19th, 2004, 05:54 AM

<<<-- Originally posted by Ronald Biese :
no problems only solulutions -->>>

Glad to hear it, I often find too many people without solutions.

Jason nice solution, I wonder if the next lot of 50MB's 3.5 inch drives are going to improve the situation.

Wayne Morellini · November 19th, 2004, 05:57 AM

Well, I'm going to read between the lines (well speculate at least). If your camera has much more than a sensor (cases, controls, and adaptor), then it would be good if you could upgrade to 1080 by replacing sensor and drives.

Thanks

Wayne.

November 17th, 2004, 08:36 AM	#79
Rob Lohman RED Code Chef Join Date: Oct 2001 Location: Holland Posts: 12,514	Rai: I know it is. Okay, if that's the way you guys want to do this then we'll have to wait I guess. Good luck. __________________ Rob Lohman, visuar@iname.com DV Info Wrangler & RED Code Chef Join the DV Challenge \| Lady X Search DVinfo.net for quick answers \| Buy from the best: DVinfo.net sponsors

November 18th, 2004, 05:53 PM	#87
Michael Struthers Major Player Join Date: Jul 2003 Location: SF, Ca Posts: 421	All this talk and not one pic of the camera. Don't know if I believe it. As Elvis says: "A little less conversation, and a little more action" __________________ Michael Struthers www.buzzdigital.com

November 17th, 2004, 07:42 AM	#76
Wayne Morellini Inner Circle Join Date: May 2003 Location: Australia Posts: 2,762	Thanks, the spezial's say a lot about cinema features and design commitment. I think what people are after is a brief Features/Specifications summary page, like many product marketing brochures do (and Rob says "No, no, more, more! ;).

November 17th, 2004, 07:53 AM	#77
Obin Olson Trustee Join Date: Jan 2003 Location: Wilmington NC Posts: 1,414	@Markus: The piles of data you get with higher resolution and higher bit depth are just a little too much for todays processors and hard drives... Not really I will be recording 12bit 1920x1080 images at 24fps markus I would not make a product that is 8bit. It's not good enough for post work

November 17th, 2004, 08:05 AM	#78
Wayne Morellini Inner Circle Join Date: May 2003 Location: Australia Posts: 2,762	I agree, unless you want a small low power or one drive camera 1080p is totally possible.

November 17th, 2004, 09:03 AM	#80
Rai Orz Regular Crew Join Date: Jun 2004 Location: Germany Posts: 136	@Obin: by sure, Markus team do enough tests with post work. Drake have some spezial things, started with white balance (why we need 2 Bits more, if we kill this for white balace in the post?)over look up table for convert down to 8Bit to some others, so at the end, DRAKEs 8Bit writing to only one HDD is optimal. A engeneer may see first the datas. Artists see also the result. What Markus said about todays (PC) processors is this: You can´t find a system without noise (from coolers) and also only low power need. And they don´t like swaping HDDs every few minutes. BTW: If you like start a game: Lets do this: Who can record first, 1920x1080, 24fps, 36Bit. All parts, in a portable camera case, low power, no noise, battery. ... and scameramans fan: swaping HDDs each 4 minutes

November 17th, 2004, 09:33 AM	#81
Wayne Morellini Inner Circle Join Date: May 2003 Location: Australia Posts: 2,762	I can say this, 35mm film cameras can be big, Rolls of film are big. So in comparison 4 drive (cheap drives in Raid to save money and increase capacity) canbe smaller and tripod mounted, and the drives be smaller than a roll of film. What you are facing is cooling technique problems. For my Case ideas I was looking at an almost completely silent passive cooling (well possibly completely) technique with added unique features. Very patentable stuff. But if you look around you should be able to find and implement existing passive cooling techniques. The second problem is peak efficiency, which means in hot places like where I live you will need much more efficency then in Germany. So you have to get processing power under a certain heat disapation per GHZ. This means single or multicore, Pent M and VIA processors, and using a good onbaord GPU and DSP's (every trick in the book). Then also lower powered lower speed memory (memory aren't the major speed restriction). Drives, well if you use an extra drive on cheap array you can use lower powered higher capacity drives, so now they last 4 times longer per drive *2+ drives. But you get the picture on how to shoe horn in a system. Now using best programming practices (and realtime OS or stripped realtime Linux witrh Machine code extensions) maybe you also halve the proccessing power needed. So if Markus looks at what the average PC does it may look impossible, but if you look at what the best can do it is.

November 18th, 2004, 05:22 AM	#82
Régine Weinberg Major Player Join Date: Jan 2004 Location: Bordeaux, going to Bangkok, 2011 Posts: 232	Hm good morning, a bit late okay go back 20 years and there you have all you need it was used by STAX for their Class A amps, fantastic sound still today, called "heat pipe" no noise at all, it is heavily used by radio amteurs and works no problems only solulutions

November 18th, 2004, 01:17 PM	#83
Jason Rodriguez Trustee Join Date: Mar 2003 Location: Virginia Beach, VA Posts: 1,095	Four Fujistu 5400RPM 2.5" SATA drives can sustain over 100MB/s. The new Seagate 7200.1 Momentus drives (2.5" SATA) in a four drive RAID can sustain over 120MB/s. They also go up to 100GB each, and four of them will fit in the same space as a single 3.5" drive. The Fujitsu's are available now. The Seagates in 1Q05. Combind that with a SATA RAID card or the 4 sata ports on a 915 chipset (and the 915GM when it ships in January, also called "Alviso" that'll use the lower-powered Pentium M), and you've got a ton of throughput without a lot of heat, wattage, etc. If you're doing things right, you don't need to have four 10K drives gobbling up 50W of power to get the throughput you need.

November 18th, 2004, 03:46 PM	#85
Rai Orz Regular Crew Join Date: Jun 2004 Location: Germany Posts: 136	Jason, this thread is for DRAKE. And DRAKE work with only one HDD. Let me say only one thing: Be sure, we know what is possible. And if you can read between the lines, you maybe know what you will find some day from us. But now lets talk about DRAKE. Tomorrow we will have a final product design meeting. As we said it, it is a whole SYSTEM, not only a camera. I´m sure we talk also about things we can say here before the web side is ready

November 18th, 2004, 05:36 PM	#86
Gary McClurg Major Player Join Date: Jul 2004 Location: Springfield, MO, USA Posts: 389	So is the web site going to be up tomorrow or the camera is going to be ready?

November 19th, 2004, 02:29 AM	#88
Rai Orz Regular Crew Join Date: Jun 2004 Location: Germany Posts: 136	@Gary and @Michael: The camera is ready. Markus continue shoot his movie with it. You saw first clips here. But today we will talk about last changes in case and accessories design, because most mechanics parts are made by hand, whithout CNC. To start (and optimize) serial production, we must change some part design (only for part production, not for function). On the other hand, we will talk today about a main question: What parts and accessories will be included, and whats optional.

November 19th, 2004, 05:54 AM	#89
Wayne Morellini Inner Circle Join Date: May 2003 Location: Australia Posts: 2,762	<<<-- Originally posted by Ronald Biese : no problems only solulutions -->>> Glad to hear it, I often find too many people without solutions. Jason nice solution, I wonder if the next lot of 50MB's 3.5 inch drives are going to improve the situation.

November 19th, 2004, 05:57 AM	#90
Wayne Morellini Inner Circle Join Date: May 2003 Location: Australia Posts: 2,762	Well, I'm going to read between the lines (well speculate at least). If your camera has much more than a sensor (cases, controls, and adaptor), then it would be good if you could upgrade to 1080 by replacing sensor and drives. Thanks Wayne.